Clashing Heads
Unlike traditional mediation (demonstrated Bruce Lee above) ‘The Warriors’ Meditation’ involves open-eyed full spatial awareness.
The Warrior’s Meditation author Richard L Haight conceived ‘Total Embodiment Meditation’, a style of MINDFULNESS designed for martial arts sparring and competition, while training samurai sword skills in Japan. He presents a bespoke guided meditation on audio and explains the thinking behind this intriguing mindset.
Growing up on a ranch in San Diego, Richard L Haight’s MMA journey was cut short when he was run over by a horse. “"What I found was that I couldn't maintain that training because my back would go out every time... Once a month or something a nerve would pinch, and then I would be unable to train for a couple of weeks.,” he tells Battles Combat Sports Journal over Zoom from lockdown in Oregon, “It couldn't work. There was too much damage."
Haight travelled to Japan as a young man in 1997. Over the following fifteen years living in historic Kanagawa Prefecture, he earned a clutch of grades in traditional martial arts from sensei Shizen Osaki, to whit: Menkyo in Seigo-ryu Battojutsu (sword drawing), Kaiden ranking in Yagyu Shinkage-ryu Jojutsu (short staff) and Menkyo-kaiden in Osaki-ha Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu (jujutsu), and Gaiden ranking (equivalent to 8th degree blackbelt) in Yagyu Shinkage-ryu Hyoho (that’s sword strategy and fencing).
Smooth swordplay suited Haight’s spinal niggles, but difficulties remained. He took time to also master a Japanese system of physical healing therapy known as Sotai-ho.
Haight is bottom row second from left
Despite training avidly in the Far East, Haight’s experience of meditation was limited to a handful of encouraging, though irregular experiments back home in the USA. But he claims to have received a vision which encouraged him to “combine the therapeutic arts with the martial arts” and there he’d find the key to unlock his training issues.
Haight began honing what he would later dub ‘Total Embodiment Meditation (TEM)’, a method of meditating with the eyes open that brings clarity in high pressure situations – such as being attacked with a sword by his samurai master trainer. “I probably didn't get to the point where I could apply it until my mid thirties,” says Haight, “I don’t think it’s entirely new, just not well known,” he says, “in Japan I spoke to a survival instructor who said he’d learned something similar from shaman!”
Haight explains TEM in his book The Warrior’s Meditation out now. The meditative system, practiced with the eyes open, trains complete clarity of sensual input, allowing for rapid instinctive reactions.
“There are six fundamental steps to TEM, first working through each of the senses,” Haight explains, “then finishing with the sixth step, which is spatial awareness.” Advanced sword fighting was an ideal crucible in which to hone the skill, as it “is always about not telegraphing and hard-to-read movements. Even drawing the sword itself should be done with no anticipation.”
Haight has generously provided a guided Total Embodiment Meditation that Battles cats looking for an extra edge can start using today via the audio link posted at the start of the article. TEM is designed for martial arts contest and sparring by helping the practitioner to focus entirely on the matter in hand, inspiring feats of muscle memory and smooth but rapid reactions. It’s not incomparable to the ‘flow state’ sought after by sports psychologists in their charges.
“Buddhist monks measure alpha, beta and gamma waves in the brain,” says Haight, “Watching TV for example our brains are said to be in an unconscious alpha wave-producing state that’s an appalling time to be attacked. Meditation leads to a conscious alpha wave state, which is what we can use for the martial arts and to improve the quality of our lives.”
Like the open-eyed ‘concentration meditation’ practiced by buddhists, TEM requires a degree of dedication and discipline.
“In meditation I’m interested in what needs correcting, not what feels comfortable,” says Haight, “the Buddhist path of awareness, Dharma, involves stripping away distractions leaving behind only what must be real. Myself, almost everything holding me back in life is attitudinal. My attitude dictates the energy I omit, and people can feel it. A conversation is going on at the nervous system level predicated by the attitude we all carry. But you change your attitude, then certain doors open and close.”
Grab The Warrior’s Meditation from Amazon and follow Richard on YouTube.